Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

The New Justice

President Obama seems to have made an inspired choice in picking Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. She has an impressive judicial record, a stellar academic background and a compelling life story. Judge Sotomayor would also be a trailblazing figure in the mold of Thurgood Marshall, becoming the first member of the nation’s large and growing but still under-represented Hispanic population to serve on the court.

Based on what we know now, the Senate should confirm her so she can join the court when it begins its new term in October.

It’s impossible not to be moved by Judge Sotomayor’s story — born in the Bronx to Puerto Rican parents and brought up in a city housing project. She was found to have diabetes as a child, and her father, a factory worker, died when she was 9, leaving her mother, a nurse, to raise her and her brother. Judge Sotomayor attended Princeton, from which she graduated summa cum laude, and Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the law review.

Her legal experience is impressive and wide-ranging. She spent five years as a prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and was a partner in a commercial litigation firm. She has been a federal judge for 16 years, serving on both a district court, where she presided over trials, and an appellate court. As a member of the New York-based United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, she is known for being smart, extraordinarily well prepared and deeply engaged.

In her rulings, Judge Sotomayor has repeatedly displayed the empathy Mr. Obama has said he is looking for in a justice. She has listened attentively to, and often ruled in favor of, people who have been discriminated against, defendants and other groups that are increasingly getting short shrift in the federal courts. She has shown little patience for the sort of procedural bars that conservative judges have been using to close the courthouse door on people whose rights have been violated.

Conservative activists have already begun trying to paint Judge Sotomayor as a liberal ideologue, but her carefully reasoned, fact-based decisions indicate otherwise. In many ways, her approach to the law is similar to that of Justice David Souter, whose seat she would take.

The Senate will have to carefully scrutinize Judge Sotomayor’s record on and off the bench, as it must for anyone seeking to join the court. If no big surprises turn up, it is not clear that Senate Republicans will expend much effort trying to block this nomination. Apart from her qualifications, they may decide that in light of their desire to win over Latino voters — and their low chance of winning a confirmation battle, given the Democrats’ big Senate majority — it is not worth the fight.

If Judge Sotomayor joins the court, it will be a special point of pride for Hispanic-Americans — as it was for Jews, blacks and women before them to see one of their own take a seat on the highest tribunal in the land. It will also bring the paltry number of female justices back to two. And as Democratic Party strategists have no doubt calculated, the selection could give Mr. Obama and his party a boost with a key voting group.

Judge Sotomayor, though, is more than just a distinguished member of two underrepresented groups. She is an accomplished lawyer and judge, who could become an extraordinary Supreme Court justice.

A version of this editorial appears in print on , on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: The New Justice. Today's Paper|Subscribe